Air powered hand tools greatly increase the efficiency of many construction operations. A worker is able to accomplish far more in a given time with a power tool than with a tool driven solely by the worker.
One of the great advances in the construction industry was the advent of the air powered nail gun. This enables framers, roofers, floor installers, and others to work far more rapidly.
One drawback to the standard nail gun is that the user must be within arm's reach of his work. While this is not a great inconvenience for single level work, anyone who has carried a nail gun up and down a ladder repeatedly to perform work that cannot be reached from the ground understands that the proximity of the work required is indeed a shortcoming of the prior art.